For those who for many years have followed developments in Guatemala, either from up close or from afar, two recent events have given us a mixture of joy and surprise.

I am initially referring to the recent ‘exposure and dismantling’ of the criminal organisation or structure self–titled 'La Línea’ (The Line) ', a smuggling mafia linked to the Guatemalan army. It began its activities in the 1970’s, operating with complete impunity for nearly half a century, aided and supported by ever-increasingly corrupt system.The criminal work and the expansive structure they developed was carried out at various state institutions, at different levels and sectors, where for example, millions of dollars due to be paid for import duties were diverted into the pockets and bank accounts of the organizers and operators of this criminal network.

Whilst we have had to endure so much repression, impunity and hardship over recent decades, we are still finding it incredible that corruption amongst ‘public officials’ could prevail on this scale. The positive news is that the network, and it’s links to the highest levels of Government, has been exposed.

At the same time, we received the news that the USA’s most recent issue of "Time" magazine has published their choice of the ‘100 most influential people in the world’, of which Guatemalan Aura Elena Farfán is featured. Aura Elena is described as ‘The Truth Seeker’, in recognition of her many decades working for justice for the families of the civilian victims killed and disappeared by the military during the armed conflict.Guatemala’s truth seeker →

Although the impact of the de-commissioning 'The Line' still reverberates across Guatemala, and while its citizens understandably continue to express their repudiation, we have decided here to focus on a reflection of the work of Aura Elena. Her selection as one of the most influential people in the world comes at a particularly difficult time for human rights’ defenders, whether they be working in support of women's rights, health, education or housing, or indigenous communities exercising their constitutional right to consultation. It is therefore very important that the recognition of her more than thirty years of struggle is celebrated widely.

Aura Elena's life changed forever on May 15, 1984, the day when her brother Rubén Amílcar Farfán was abducted by men in civilian clothes as he was leaving work at the printing department of San Carlos National University (USAC) . According to details recorded in the infamous Guatemalan government intelligence document the "Military Diary", Ruben was killed while trying to resist being abducted by the security forces. The State has never recognised its involvement in the incident, and his body has never been found.

Whilst working at the University, Rubén Amilcar was also a student in Humanities faculty, a member of the Executive Committee of the AEU (the National Students Union), worked at the University Editorial Office, and he was the chief of the Council of Representatives of the Trade Union of USAC .

In June 1984, Aura Elena, along with Nineth Montenegro, María Emilia García, María del Rosario Godoy de Cuevas and Raquel Linares, initiated actions in the search for their missing relatives, and founded the Mutual Support Group , known as GAM.

They called the new organization the "Mutual Support Group" because this name summed up the philosophy and the group dynamics at the time. A group, the majority of whom were women trying to find loved ones captured by the Guatemalan military, they became united against the fierce government repression, the censorship of the media at the time, and were together a very courageous and public voice for justice.

A few years later, in 1992, after the group dynamics of GAM had changed, Aura Elena and her colleague Blanca Hernandez left to form FAMDEGUA (The Association of Relatives of the Disappeared in Guatemala), with whom she has continued to tirelessly work in defense of human rights for nearly a quarter of a century. FAMDEGUA’s stated goal was "to follow up on the search for the missing, but also to find justice regarding the abuses committed during the armed conflict in Guatemala".

In 1992, when the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) team was formed, FAMDEGUA started to accompany them as they carried out exhumations of mass (clandestine) grave sites that had come to light. Since that time, FAMDEGUA have trained over 200 human rights’ promoters to work in various regions of the country, they’ve overseen some 120 exhumations from which the remains of over a thousand people have been discovered, and they now are acting as the chief prosecuting agency in several court cases.

Aura Elena, as a representative of FAMDEGUA, has been a plaintiff and supported countless civil lawsuits. Some of the cases in where she has been involved as part of FAMDEGUA are described below. They illustrate Aura Elena’s solidarity with victims of the war, as well as her courage and determination to speak out and organize in spite of what dangers that might present to her personally:

THE CASE OF LAS DOS ERRES

"The slaughter of Las Dos Erres is one of the bloodiest atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army during the armed conflict. The incident occurred on 6, 7 and 8 of December 1982, when members of the Government’s ‘Kaibil’ special forces entered the neighborhood of Las Dos Erres accompanied by a platoon of about 40 soldiers. They subjected the villagers to torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Several women, including girls and teenagers, were raped repeatedly.The children were brutally beaten and thrown, many still alive, into a well that was under construction. Women and men were subsequently executed, and then they, too, were thrown into the well …"(from a FAMDEGUA report)

For those who lost family and friends, what happened at the time has left a wound that is still open today.

In 1996 human rights organizations CEJIL and FAMDEGUA together took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The Dos Erres case came to represent an international denunciation by human rights specialists at the Inter-American Court.

On November 24, 2009, over ten years after the filing of the complaint and after a long and arduous process, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a guilty verdict on the case, which required the Guatemalan State to effectively investigate, convict and punish the perpetrators of the slaughter.

(Whist some progress was made years after the initial ruling, like the sentence of four soldiers in August 2011, the Government of Otto Perez Molina has recently sought to deny the proven facts that led to the convictions, and have openly sought to ‘question the competence’ of the IACHR.)

This is the case of six people that were ‘disappeared’ between 1982 and 1984 in the village of Choatalún, Chimaltenango. In spite of very little outside support for over two decades, the relatives of the victims escalated their titanic struggle for justice in 2003, with the support of the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), and FAMDEGUA.

Cusanero Coj, a military commissioner, was identified by the community as the key person with responsibility for the capture, disappearance, or murder of the villagers. In 2009, Cusanero was sentenced to 150 years in prison. This was the first such sentence, relating to the period of the internal armed conflict and in the history of Guatemala, delivered for the crime of ‘enforced disappearance.’

The ‘Diario Militar’ is a military intelligence document that contains the records of 183 civilians who were disappeared between August 1983 and March 1985. Many of the persons’ entries have had added a handwritten note "Code 300", by which the State recorded that the person they had abducted had subsequently been executed. This was in many cases after enduring months of torture whilst in military confinement. Included in that list of captured persons was Ruben Amílcar, Aura’s brother.

The discovery of the Military Diary was important because it documented, in the ‘hand’ of the Military Intelligence agencies themselves, the last whereabouts of victims of enforced disappearance during the war.

In 2005, 28 families of the victims of the Military Diary, including Aura Elena and with the support of the Myrna Mack Foundation, took their case against the State of Guatemala before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

On November 20, 2012, the Court found the Government of Guatemala guilty.

The first response of the State to the judgements of the IACHR was the pronouncement of a governmental diktat, ‘370-2012’, which sought to deny the jurisdiction of the Court. The government is openly stating that it does not accept the judgement, even if it is the final ruling of the Inter-American Court.

A NEW CHAPTER IN THE SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH:THE MURDER OF ROSARIO GODOY DE CUEVAS

Rosario was my sister-in-law, the wife of my brother Carlos who was disappeared on 15 May 1984. After 11 months of campaigning with Aura Elena and other members of GAM for information as to his whereabouts , Rosario was herself abducted and murdered on April 4 1985, along with her young son and her brother. Her assassination was yet another Government action which sought to silence the voices of the families of the disappeared.

Unlike the case of Carlos, after their assassination the bodies of Rosario, her brother Maynor and my nephew Augusto Rafael, were 'found'. The government, faking a car accident, left their tortured bodies in Rosario’s car in a ditch along the side of a road far from where she lived. Today, some 30 years after this barbaric act, the investigations into their deaths have been reactivated, led by Aura Elena and the team at FAMDEGUA.

As in countless other cases, some of which we’ve mentioned here, this process may take several years. And although we have waited over thirty years to get to this point, it is very important and symbolic that it is precisely Aura Elena, the person with whom Rosario formed that first mutual support group, that it is she who is now leading the work, seeking the truth of what happened to our beloved Rosario, Augusto Rafael and Maynor.